


a new god

by josephides



Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs
Genre: F/M, Wild Sign Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-28 07:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30136251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides
Summary: For all their good intentions, some subjects would trigger the other’s temper. Soul-deep hurt would do that. Measured tones evolved into raised voices - shouting, screaming, the occasional slammed door. Once she had thrown a vase at him, along with some choice four-letter epithets.
Relationships: Bran Cornick/Leah Cornick, Leah Cornick/Sherwood Post
Comments: 51
Kudos: 45





	a new god

**Author's Note:**

> Note: spoilers for Wild Sign. Do not read if you don't want to be spoiled. 
> 
> Second note: I can see myself becoming boring writing / rewriting different but very similar explorations of the kind of content in this work that is an outcome of all the new information from Wild Sign. It's very interesting finally having confirmed details about a character's history - because once you do, you now have to work in the canon... which is both restricting and exhilarating at the same time.
> 
> Third note: more of an excuse than anything - I worried about writing something TOO QUICKLY, before the book hangover (thanks @feathersandpaperboats) truly settled and I'd processed everything. But, here you go.

**now**

_I’m going to get gas and then drop by Asil’s._

Out in the greenhouse, Leah paused to listen, her gloved fingers deep in soil, then realized she was expected to respond now because she could. _All right. Will you be back home for lunch?_

She felt a sense of warmth from him, followed by the affirmative. _Yes._

The warmth continued, even as he presumably got in his car and drove off. That warmth had layers. Warmth because she had cared to ask for his return. Warmth because they had this connection now, this gift of the mating bond. Warmth because for Bran, ‘home’ meant ‘Leah’ and that _warmth_ was just the tip of the ice-burg of his feelings for her.

It had been a month now and she was still not used to it.

It, meaning a Bran who loved her, both the good and the bad – and the constant trickle from the mating bond.

After that first, slightly volatile revelation in her bedroom, when Bran had opened the bond wide to her for the first time, they had agreed to maintain a small, open crack. Enough for him to never lose her again, which she now knew was a dread-fear for him. For her to be reassured that what he was telling her was the truth, not some fabrication to keep her placid.

Enough for both of them, two people who had tried to ignore or control their emotions all their lives, to not be overwhelmed.

For it was overwhelming. That first time she had dropped to her knees, pressed her forehead to the floor, hit by a wave of _him_.

Leah had always thought Bran a cold bastard. And in some senses he still was that implacable, near frozen surface. But beneath that smooth and cold façade was a groundswell of writhing emotion and that was just him, his human half. The beast within was another matter, another potent wave of darker thoughts and desires. All that, everything that he had been and was, pouring out towards her…

Overwhelming. Wonderful. Awful in the original sense of the word.

She shook her head and covered up the bulb in the pot with more soil, watered it and moved on to the next. She put her mind to lunch as she worked. The pack was still being hilariously circumspect with them so she had plenty of food, her refrigerator packed with goodies that hungry werewolves usually scavenged throughout the day. She didn’t know who had put them up to it or if, more likely, enough of them had been exposed to Bran and Leah’s new way of communicating that they had made up their own minds to avoid them for the time being.

Leah winced, brushed her gloves together and began to tidy up. Most of their communication since her memories had returned started out well enough. Talking. The kind of uncomfortable talking that normally strangers had with each other - carefully chosen words with long pauses in between, exploring the other’s boundaries. Leah had truthfully never bothered with that level of delicacy in her interactions with anyone, but her marriage was different. It deserved better. Finally.

In calm and measured tones, they explored the revelations of her memories, his long hidden questions, his confessions, all those unspoken subjects of the two centuries of their marriage.

Lancing wounds, Bran had called it, with a pained, quiet smile.

For all their good intentions, some subjects would trigger the other’s temper. Soul-deep hurt would do that. Measured tones evolved into raised voices - shouting, screaming, the occasional slammed door. Once she had thrown a vase at him, along with some choice four-letter epithets.

It wasn’t as if they hadn’t argued before – quite the opposite – but it had mostly been a one-sided thing, carefully managed by her so that there were no witnesses. When she had yelled at him for whatever she felt he had done wrong, he would just stand there, placidly unyielding. A cold bastard who did what he wanted afterwards.

Now, _now_ Leah knew what he felt like inside. Now she knew what her anger did to him. How it cut him. That, beneath it all, was a love for her so deep it was fathomless, that Bran felt he was endlessly falling into. That scared him. His love was no gentle thing. It was dangerous. Unyielding. 

Overwhelming.

Still. Leah wasn’t being careful now. She did not care, now, what people saw. If they fought, they did it where they stood. In front of whomever. Whenever. From the perspective of her pack, their pack, to see the Alpha pair screaming at each other as they often did now was probably less than ideal. It made sense that they would want to avoid that.

Back inside, she changed from her gardening clothes, scrubbed the dirt from under her polished fingernails, tidied her hair and thought about make-up, before dismissing it. She upended the clothes hamper and took it downstairs to put a load of washing on.

In her smart, cherry-and-steel kitchen, she pulled together a chicken salad, heated up some rolls and a hearty soup, packed full of grains and fall vegetables. Whilst this was warming, she noticed the answer machine light was blinking on the handset in the kitchen, a device that had not existed until three weeks ago when Bran had decided the pair to the one in the office could live in the kitchen.

She pressed play, leaning on the counter, munching the end of a carrot. Three messages played, one after the other, each the same. She heard breathing and then nothing except the click of someone hanging up. There was no number recorded.

Curious but not unusual, she decided. Many of the older wolves didn’t like leaving messages.

As she was taking the soup off the heat, she heard the door of Bran’s car slam outside. The phone rang and this time she answered, assuming whomever it was would want to speak to him urgently.

“Cornick,” she said briskly.

At the other end of the line, a man breathed in sharply. “Leah?” he said.

Leah knew that voice. Without a word, she hung up.

She was stood, staring at the phone, when Bran came in. “Did I hear the phone?” he asked, dropping his keys into the bowl in the middle of the kitchen island.

She looked at him. She could tell from his face that he thought he suspected something. “I think we need to talk about your brother now.”

**then**

Zander was four when Sherwood came, though Sherwood was not his name.

He introduced himself as Dai, giving her a quirky little bow. She had never got his surname but months later he confided in her, “I’m named after my father,” as if this had some kind of meaning. It had been meaningless to her then.

He was quiet looking, that was Leah’s first impression. Young, of course. She had thought at the time that he was only a little older than herself. Leah thought she was twenty but she only knew this because Zander was four. She kept time now only for the ages of her children.

He was average height for a man, only an inch or two taller than her, and his hair was a lighter dark blonde than her own, perennially untidy in a way that her fingers itched to correct, and he had startling green eyes.

She had liked him on sight. There had been something about him that she couldn’t put her finger on and he had seemingly felt the same way. Would look at her with his head tilted to the side and say, “I like your spirit.” It was a refrain she heard from him frequently, in the months that passed.

He’d heard them singing, of course, which was how he had found his way up into the settlement. Then it was too late for him, as it was too late for all of them.

“I love your spirit,” Dai whispered to her, his lips touching her neck, before she forgot him and everything they had meant to each other.

**now**

“I think we need to talk about your brother now.”

With every fiber of Bran’s being, he did not want to talk about his brother with Leah. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

They had danced around the topic for several weeks – and it had felt like a dance. Felt like a sidestep.

 _Sherwood Post_ and his past had long been an off-limits topic. Bran’s family knew that when he wanted them to know something, he would tell them. Otherwise, he did not tolerate questions and would not answer them. Knowledge was power and Bran did not share until it was useful.

The last time his brother had been here, after Bran had rescued him from the cage in Seattle, after he had re-Christened him, a man he had not seen for nearly two centuries who didn’t seem to know him from Adam, he had introduced Sherwood to Leah. He had hoped the reunion would trigger something, for now Bran wanted to know more about his wife. _Now_ he wanted answers to questions he found he could not ask her after all this time.

With no outward expression, he had watched his brother’s face for any hint of recognition. He had done the same with Leah, who knew _technically_ of Sherwood’s involvement in her past but seemed to not remember him personally.

But, frustratingly, Sherwood had merely been polite. He had bowed his eccentric bow and called her Madam Marrok and for a moment he had thought he had seen Leah’s eyes kindle with fresh awareness. Only later, she had clarified this, his perceptive wife. She had commented that the Cornick genes were certainly very strong, weren’t they?

He remembered it well. She had been kneeling at the end of his bed in nothing but a short satin slip, a blue that matched her eyes, a knowing smirk on her beautiful face. “A brother, perhaps?”

He had ignored her, given no indication that she had observed correctly, that _Sherwood_ was his blood, his brother like she had guessed. He had silenced her the only way he knew how and she had never spoken of him again. Leah was his family, too. She knew the rules.

“You know,” Bran finally said, having shuffled through a variety of different responses.

She nodded. She poured soup into warmed bowls. Bran laid the table, fetched glasses, the pitcher of iced tea. Busy work.

“I know his real name. I know he was named for your father,” she added.

Bran felt his eyes flare. That his brother had told her this much spoke volumes. “You were lovers,” he said, bluntly, taking a seat before he fell down.

Leah placed the salad bowl and basket of rolls in the middle of the table with the soup. She looked at him through her eyelashes and sat herself. Under the table, he could hear her rubbing her hands together. “Yes.”

There was something else she wanted to say, he could feel it through the bond, the thin stream of her feelings. Bran didn’t think he was prepared to hear it. “I wondered, perhaps. If this had been the case,” he said carefully. He looked down into the bowl of soup, no part of him hungry any longer.

Sometimes he had enjoyed torturing himself, reliving the early days of their mating. It had helped fuel his anger, his emotional distance from her, when things felt like they were slipping. 

One of his theories had been this. It answered the question of why Sherwood, even half starved, half wolf as he had been, why he had tried to Change a dying woman. It gave an answer to what it had been about Leah that had driven Sherwood to do so to her. Why he had bound himself to her in such a way, using his magic.

Sherwood was an old wolf-who-was-not-a-wolf. Older even than Bran. And old wolves had good instincts. One look at the starved and sick girl Leah had been and he would have known the Change would not take. No matter all his power. 

Bran knew well what love would drive an old wolf to do.

Leah picked up her spoon. She stirred her soup. She was distressed and he didn’t need the bond to tell him that.

“This is really very hard,” she sighed.

Bran agreed. They were not his memories but it was their shared past. And he was culpable for so much of the wrong in his marriage, wrongs he could have tried to fix but cowardice, and denial, had prevented him. He had wronged her. She had not deserved to be wronged. Coming to terms with that, _dealing_ with the repercussions of that, was very hard. It would be very hard for a very long time.

He wished, however, that it was not hard for her. He wished he could give her a break.

Resolutely, Bran picked up a fork and stabbed at the chicken in the salad bowl. “He never said anything to me. Afterwards. But, then,” he looked at the seasoned meat on the end of his fork, and didn’t want to eat it, “he wouldn’t. I had just mated with the woman he was in love with.”

Knowing that as he did now, more things began to make sense. Sherwood had left him only a day after they had buried the last of Leah’s people. Leah’s child. He had never been precisely talkative, and Bran had certainly been in no place to converse, but this abrupt departure had surprised Bran. And he had not seen him again until he had pulled his bones from the silver cage. Sherwood had – conveniently, Bran had always thought, _too_ conveniently – lost all his memories.

Not one to shy away from the truth, Leah glanced up at him sharply, lips pursed. “Love might be too grandiose a term, Bran. Truly. We were trying to survive. Before we escaped. He— I was more aware than the others, for whatever reason. I think he kept me sane. Saner.” She considered it more. “Things were heightened. Extreme.” She shook her head, as if she didn’t know what to think.

He put own his fork and pinched the bridge of his nose. “If I had known—”

“Don’t,” Leah urged. “There’s no point. And you know how I feel.”

Bran did. The one bright, shining spark in all of this. His clear line into her heart. “Did you love him?”

He had to ask.

“I don’t know. It’s,” she exhaled the truth from her lips, “hard to filter the horror from it all.”

From everything she had told him, he could easily believe that. Few who had experienced what she had would come out of it with their minds intact. It spoke to her resilience, her strength of spirit that she was as whole as she was. Despite everything he had done to mitigate that.

Slowly, hesitantly, Leah stretched her hand out across the table, turning her palm to the ceiling. Bran clasped her hand, quickly. Squeezed. Her expression eased with relief and Bran chastised himself for perhaps the millionth time that day. As if there was the slightest possibility that he would reject her. He was reminded that _this_ was his responsibility now. To be the man he should have been to her.

Still holding her hand, he picked up his fork. He ate the chicken at the end. “It was him on the phone, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I left a message for him to call. Did you speak to him?”

Leah shook her head. She ate a mouthful of soup. “I wanted to speak to you first.”

He smiled. It felt old and sad. “Thank you.”

**then**

Newcomers, for they sometimes had them, strangers who wandered into the settlement, thoroughly lost and confused and often half starved themselves, were not inducted into the Singer’s presence immediately, particularly not men.

The Singer liked to test their mettle first. Observe from a distance.

So it was several weeks before Dai was brought before Leah’s Father’s new god. Several weeks of his pottering about, joining in the singing, assisting where he could. He was good with his hands, very strong. He helped with building fencing for the few animals they had, and he hunted, too. Brought back wild pig, rabbit and wild turkey, entirely by himself. 

She was not there to see what happened when he met the Singer. She had children to look after – hers and her mother’s newborn, her new sister – and she was still nursing. The Singer left new mothers in peace when they were nursing. He wanted his children to be _nourished_.

Leah had known, long before the others, that something was wrong with the man their community worshipped. The Singer in the Woods, they called him. That friendly, kind man with his gentle hands. There was something wrong with this place her parents called ‘home’. There had been talk amongst the women of strange memory loss. Leah own, unacknowledged mystical pregnancies. The pale wheat-silver of Zander’s hair, so like her own siblings. The smell of her father on her skin and the things that happened in the dark that she did not think of.

There was sickness in the settlement, a wrongness. 

Perhaps she would not have questioned it, had she not been the eldest of her father’s children, had she not watched her papa fail so spectacularly with his big, ridiculous dreams and begun to question every decision he made. She had grown up quickly witnessing adult mistakes, the survival instinct honed into her in the expedition west. Though there was only eleven months between her and Tally, her brother, by the time _he_ rescued them from starvation at the side of that creek, it felt like years.

Several times, she’d tried to convince her papa that they should leave. He had shaken her off. Been angry with her. She was disobedient. She should be grateful. They had food on their table – not very much food, after all the Singer did not particularly understand that the people of the town needed to be fed differently to him – and a loving god who only asked for music in return.

But he was a fickle god. If he felt they were not loving him as much as they should, as if there was not love in their hearts, in their music, he forbade them things. Food. Water. Sometimes people would disappear. Sicknesses would spread quickly through the settlement. Leah had a terrible hacking cough for several weeks the winter after Sherwood came, as did others. Several died from it, including her mother, and the only reason Leah did not was because of Sherwood, who would visit in the night with gifts of bones he boiled with fresh water to create a broth, with herbs he said would help her, that he mixed into a paste within a circle of candlelight. He’d press his hand to her chest and whisper words to her, words she didn’t understand, and she would feel the heaviness in her lungs ease.

“We must get away from here,” he told her, whispering nonsense words to her baby, who gazed up at him with his blue, blue eyes.

Leah would have followed Sherwood anywhere.

**now**

They were sharing a bedroom now. This house – the pack mansion – had been built in the 1930s and it was not the first house they had lived in together. But once there had been one bed that Leah slept in and sometimes Bran joined her. Sometimes he had slept elsewhere – outside, in human or wolf form, sometimes with his son’s family, before they had moved on.

Bran had been responsible for the plans of the house. He had wanted a fortress, to withstand the coming storms – literally and metaphorical. It was he who had decided they would have two master suites on the first floor and she had accepted it, in the manner she accepted all decisions he made. Unhappily.

And now, after a little quiet discussion one night, he had begun to move into what had once been just her bedroom. Her space.

His books were now on the bedside table on his side of the bed. His toothbrush in her bathroom, his favorite shampoo in the shower. In the chair by the window, a match to the one in his room, he left clothes that he wanted to wear the next day.

Sometime soon they would need to decide what to do with the closets. She would need to make space for him. Perhaps redecorate. Hers was a firmly feminine space.

For the first time in her marriage, she woke every day to see his face. He was always up before her – always had been – but now he stayed in bed. He would lie on his side, looking at her, waiting for her to feel the weight of his gaze. 

Leah had often observed other mates’ interactions with each other, of course she had. Observed and wondered at the comparison between her relationship and theirs. It would no doubt surprise the more modern women of her acquaintance that part of Leah had always felt lucky in her mate.

In some ways, Bran made her feel safe and she had instinctively prioritized safety above everything. Safety and consistency. The immovable hierarchy of werewolf life. She liked things to be ordered, which she was reasonably sure was a reflection of her chaotic youth.

No. Trauma, she thought. She should put a name to it. _Trauma_.

This Bran, the Bran who watched her when she slept, made her feel safer than she had ever felt before. Despite everything. 

“Morning,” Bran said when she had blinked at him a few times and wiped the sleep from her face. His hand was lying between them. He had long fingers. Pianist fingers.

She laid her hand next to his, their pinkies touching. “Morning. Did you sleep well?”

The mating bond lay open, even in sleep. Most nights, he dreamed of twisted, nightmarish things, his worries manifesting in his subconscious. He had always been a restless sleeper – one of the justifications she had once used for why they often slept apart – and now she knew why. But last night he had slept through the night deeply, so her question was a politeness. A ritual she drew comfort from.

“I did. Thank you very much for asking,” he said, a little funny, as if he too found the question amusing. “And you?”

She took up the mantle of his wry smile. “Very well, thank you.” 

He smiled. Bran leaned forward to kiss her then and she didn’t under-or-over-react to this, where once she might have. Bran’s kisses used to be a prelude to sex. He did not kiss for affection’s sake. Or he didn’t used to.

They were getting better at this part. Him offering and her receiving and vice versa. They kissed for long minutes before Bran even touched her, curving his hand over her waist, drawing her close. She could feel he was aroused but she felt no desire to hurry things along, simply enjoying the slow tangle of their tongues, the rising heat between them. He was not simply looking for a vessel—

Leah jerked back abruptly and Bran immediately froze. “Sorry,” she said, recovering from the icy-sick jolt of memory, of the vessel she had once been. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” His hand was stroking her back. His face was ghastly-kind. He had felt whatever she had remembered. She felt him shift his body, angling his need for her away, guilt suffusing him.

Stubbornly, Leah pushed through the memory and hooked her leg over him, pulling him back.

“Leah—”

“I want to go back to what we were doing,” she said firmly.

Bran sought her face for a moment, trying to work out if this was something she wanted or something she had convinced herself to want. She felt him widen the bond between them and she narrowed her eyes. “That’s cheating.”

He huffed out a breath and lowered his gaze. But he kissed her, a little closed-mouth thing, then a few others. Testing the waters, she thought. She was impatient. She caught his mouth herself and moved his hand up to her breast. His mouth opened and she slid her tongue inside, pushing him back so she could drape herself over him.

Through the bond, she felt – or saw – a thought. A memory. Of her, rising over him, her head thrown back in ecstasy. To her mind she looked nothing like herself - she looked like a painting of some mythological thing. She wouldn’t have been surprised if wings sprouted from behind her, Bran worshipping her from beneath.

This time, when she drew back from him, it was with a smile. “Really,” she drawled.

“You’re magnificent,” he replied, sweet wonder on his face. He rose up to kiss her, sweetness dissolving into desire. “My Valkyrie.”

**then**

She was a mother of two, the first time she laid with a man. Or at least, that was how Leah had stubbornly seen it, even though she _knew_ , she knew otherwise.

There was no privacy at home, with so many children underfoot, and the community was a nosy one. They were still – in theory – God fearing Christians, so to be seen out of her father’s household with another man was a subject for gossip. Not that it mattered. Not that any of it mattered.

Sherwood had been nervous. So had she. They had only exchanged a few kisses before, kisses that had grown more heated, more desperate, and each time had been interrupted by people. Or the music. When Sherwood had snuck her away, leaving the children in the care of a sympathetic young neighbor, there had been a blanket rolled up under his arm and she had known what he intended. They were to lie together, like a man and wife should. She trembled with excitement.

They hadn’t undressed all the way. Leah’s dress was simple, with buttons down the front which he helped her undo. His pants came off. She had touched him curiously and he had laughed, drawing her hand away and kissing her fingers. “It’s been a long time for me, _caraid_ ,” he’d said raggedly, with his lilting accent.

He had counted the ribs of her thin body, cupped her breasts, and then moved inside her with such gentleness. She had been relieved. Grateful. There had been no pain, only a rising, heated delight that blossomed abruptly. She had gasped with it, surprised at the alien sensation. She hadn’t known her body was capable of such a thing.

Sherwood had shuddered above her and taken the Lord’s name in vain. He had kissed her repeatedly, over her face and neck. Told her how wonderful she was. That they would be married, as soon as they escaped.

“I will take care of you. You and Zander and the baby. I— I have to tell you some things about me.” He stroked her hair and she thought she saw a strange shimmer of light cross his eyes. “But later. When we’re free. I have a plan. I will need your help.”

**now**

Bran was angry with his brother. He had been angry before. He had been angry for centuries. For millennia.

Sherwood Post’s memory loss had not been the first time his brother had frustrated Bran. Dai had escaped their mother’s clutches long before Bran and his son had. He was cunning and powerful, in many senses more powerful than Bran had been, for he had worked his magic from a younger age, magic that had come down their genetic history from other beings than the witch who had borne them. 

But Bran was angry because the burden of his guilt had already been unbearable, and now it was more so.

And his brother would not take his call.

“I am leaving another message,” he told the damnable and damned answer machine. “In the hopes that you would do me the bare minimum and return my call, _Sherwood_.”

He hung up.

In the main house, he could hear Tag and others roaring with enthusiasm. Leah had consented to move the games console to the living area for an evening of entertainment, something she had never agreed to before. She had always loathed the computer games, a fact he had put down to her lack of willingness to learn how to play. Or be taught. She didn’t like to look stupid in front of their people. _You make me look stupid plenty enough already_ , she had spat at him once.

He did. He had done. It had been deliberate. They would need to talk about that, too.

That morning however, Bran had eaten his cereal and watched Tag coax Leah through the basics of the game. Her tongue had been caught between her teeth, her eyes fixed on the screen, flicking to the hand-held controller in her hands and back up again. She had died a hundred deaths before ten in the morning and had laughed about each one.

Tag, who had known her only a handful of decades, had thought he had her measure, tilted his head to the side, visibly reconsidering. “You’ve already made improvements, _a leanbh_ ,” he told her with a broadening smile. “But you’ll have to be on my team tonight or you’ll be out in the first round.”

She had pouted, an exaggerated affectation that she had developed, oh, sometime in the Twentieth Century. “I don’t want to drag you down with me, Tag.”

This had made him laugh. “No one can drag me down. I’m _unstoppable._ ”

In life as well as virtually, Bran reflected, finishing his bowl of cereal and setting it aside. He stood. “May I have a lesson?” he asked, sitting down next to his wife, resting his hand on her leg so she didn’t move away. She was wearing comfortable clothes – dark green leggings, a baggy grey sweatshirt. Clothes she would never have been be caught dead in before, for his meticulous, well-groomed mate had spent decades creating a closet that was full of her particular kind of superficial armor.

Other things were different too. Her hair was tied back but in a plain ponytail, in a manner that suggested it had been quickly done and pieces had not been trapped correctly. Where normally her eyelashes were lengthened with mascara, her cheeks tinted with blush, the only make-up she was wearing was a gloss on her lips that smelled of cherries.

Old wolves were not good with change. Things were moving very fast for Bran.

At least her nails were still polished - a pale, girlish pink.

The last video game Bran had played had involved a small blue hedgehog and some gold coins. This – something to do with pirates – was significantly more elaborate but the principles were the same. Patterns of buttons and reactions. He saw now why they had a budget for replacing the hand controls; it was easy to react and crush the controller.

Leah, beside him, grew increasingly excited with Bran’s progression, as ever willing him on to win. She was pressed against him, cross-legged, restlessly moving, chiming in with her own commentary as Tag gave him tips and instructions. It was distracting. He paused the game. 

“What happened?” Leah asked, her face wide open, clear of worry, completely caught up in the moment. She was having fun. 

He leaned forward and licked her lips. The gloss tasted of cherries too. Her eyes dilated. He did again, half kiss, half tongue. He wanted her with a suddenness that took his breath away.

Behind him, Tag grunted. “I’m out of here,” he said, heaving himself from the couch.

Bran barely heard him. In broad daylight, the doors of their house unlocked, where people came and went at will, he tipped her back onto the couch with every intention of making love to her there and then.

They had been married a long time and had come together in all the ways it was possible for a couple to do so. But sex was private. For Bran, it had once been even a little shameful. When they had been first mated, the bond had lit his desire for her so strongly that he had needed to exert significant control over himself not to rut with her like a monster in the weeks after he had forced her Change. In the end, it had been Leah who had approached him, relieving him of that burden. She had consented to that, at least.

He had hated it. Hated his desire for her. Hated that he found physical pleasure in her body. His mate had died, died because of something he had not asked for, a child he had not wanted and did not love, and now he was betraying her memory with another woman. Night after night, he had returned to Leah. Satiated himself. Placated the monster inside whilst feeling more of a monster himself.

He had been unable to stop himself. All his centuries of control meant nothing within the trap he had created for himself. Their mating bargain.

Now of course, Bran hoped, he _prayed_ , that the anger he had felt had not been passed on to Leah, wholly innocent as she had been. Who had been abused for years, had all her choices taken from her, only for another man to do it once again.

And now he knew that, had she had the choice, he was not even the brother she would have chosen.

**then**

There weren’t enough competent hands to feed everyone, as it was mostly only a handful of women and the children whom Leah had convinced to escape with them, before Sherwood had turned his untold magic and violence upon the settlement and the Singer had returned it in kind.

He had killed her father. Or the Singer had, in retribution for their rebellion. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t mourn him. Her memories of him felt warped. Like they were moving through molasses. She couldn’t seem to remember much at all.

Zander— she had left him behind. She hadn’t been able to find him. The Singer had kept him from her until it was too late. She cried for him as she clutched her baby to her, cried for every step she took away from her firstborn and the monster they had left behind. 

Sherwood had not been the same since they escaped. His eyes gleamed with unholy fire and each night he would disappear off into the mountains. Leah imagined howls of despair. Cougar, perhaps. She thought she had seen— no. It was her mind, her confused mind, playing tricks on her. She could not think straight.

Sometimes Sherwood would return in the early hours of the morning with the half-rendered corpse of an unidentifiable animal and the meat would be laboriously seared before being passed around so everyone could take a mouthful. Sometimes he would return empty handed, tasting only of blood, stinking of fear and worry. He cared little for privacy then, joining her in her make-shift bedroll, kissing her, lying with her, surrounded by the restless worry of their remaining people. People who silently turned their backs on them, ignored the sound of their coupling. There had been very little pleasure in it.

It was hot. Too hot. Soon, the children started dying. First the babies, weak already, their mothers weeping over their frail little bodies, then those a year or two years older. With a sense of inevitability, she swaddled her own baby for the last time, no tears left in her to fall, kissed his forehead, his tiny hands, whispered her love for him, forever, for always.

A young woman, a girl really, was next, just fell to the ground as they trudged in the direction Sherwood felt was the closest town. She had been with the Singer a long time, Leah thought, as they arranged her, wrapping her as best as they could in her clothes, no one strong enough to dig a grave. 

They went several days without water before finally those remaining could take no further steps. Grief, palpable devastation, coupled with exhaustion meant people just dropped to their knees, seeking shelter under sparse trees, closing their eyes and never opening them again.

Sherwood dragged Leah onwards, leaving the bodies behind. She slipped in and out of consciousness. Then, she remembered his voice, his beautiful voice, whispering to her, “Let me save you, Leah. Say yes.”

**now**

Inevitably, it was not one of their better days when Sherwood showed up. It had begun with an argument, what seemed initially like an old one – rather than a new one – Bran having the balls to ask her if part of her ‘issue’ with Mercedes had been an unconscious revulsion for Walkers.

Bran had known as soon as the words had left his mouth that he had made a mistake. Color drained from his face.

“Revulsion,” she repeated, going from placid to blindly furious in the blink of an eye.

Her mate held his hands up, palms towards her in a gesture of peace. “I did not mean— I by _no means_ meant—” He faltered. Her husband, a man of many great words and deeds. And equally dreadful ones.

“Say it.”

“I did not mean to say that your children,” Bran said the word slowly, the word a strange one to him, at least in reference to her, “were in any way revolting.”

A void opened up in front of her. Her children. Both born Walkers in the World. Children of an unnatural, nonconsensual act forced upon her by a deity. Born with her eyes, nursed at her breast. One, who had roamed the earth without her knowledge, taking photographs she had framed around her home. Whose heart she had crushed between her fingers.

_Mama._

Unbidden, she screamed at him. A scream of no words, just utter despair and fury. She felt it come from the depths of her soul, had to half bend down to let it out, her fists clenched at her sides. It hurt, that scream. It hurt something awful.

But the noise that followed it afterwards was worse. She smothered her hands over her mouth, horrified she could make such a sound, afraid it would come again. It was the sound of a fatally wounded animal. If she heard that noise in nature, she would have fetched her gun – readied herself to put it out of its misery.

Bran had dropped to his knees before her, his cheeks wet with sudden tears, aghast. Beyond him, standing in the doorway down into the basement, she saw the glimpses of pale faces – a stricken Peggy, Juste and Asil, who had run up at the sound of her despair.

She sucked in a breath and when she let it out, the noise happened again. Half the volume, no less dreadful. She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to trap the noise inside. “Help me,” she whispered, words she had never said in her life but she was panicking now. “It hurts.”

Bran, it was clear, could not move. He was frozen in place, his face a rictus twist of heartache, of horror, at the receiving end both mentally and physically of her pain. Instead it was the Moor, a terror in the night, who swept forward. In an incredible breach of hierarchy, he grabbed his Alpha by his upper arm and pulled him up like a rag doll. “Comfort your mate,” he growled, all but throwing Bran at her.

With a sharp inhale, Bran duly fell into her, embraced her, tucking her close, his hands pulling hers about his shoulders, his fingers digging into her back. She felt his tears on her neck and then a low, rumbling noise from deep inside of him. She started to shake.

“Fetch me a blanket, Peggy,” Asil commanded of the smaller woman.

A blanket was duly fetched. Asil wrapped this around her, around them both, his hands rubbing her back, her arms. He was perhaps doing the same to Bran. “It’s going to be all right,” the Moor was murmuring, in between issuing more instructions. Boil water. Tea. Honey. Whisky. _Move_.

In a series of moments that seemed to skip forwards – she was in the living room, then she was on the couch holding a cup, walking up the stairs – she found herself in bed, the taste of whisky on her tongue. The drapes were drawn, the sunlight edging them. It was only the middle of the day.

Bran was with her, the bond between them an open, throbbing wound. She shivered and he moved. “Cold?”

“No.”

Nevertheless, he tucked the comforter around her more closely. He seemed to shuffle closer himself, as if he wasn’t already pressed up behind her, as if she couldn’t feel his heart beating at her back. “You’re in shock,” he said unnecessarily.

She nodded. She had guessed that. She didn’t know it was something that could happen when you weren’t physically wounded. She wished others had not been present when it had happened to her. Leah sighed.

“I cannot express how sorry I am.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t meant to wound her. They’d been talking all morning, part of the reason why the rest of the pack had retreated downstairs to the games room. They had discussed _plenty_ of sensitive topics. 

Apparently this one… this was still too tender.

But she felt numb now. In a way that was helpful; she was detached. “You are probably right, regardless,” she decided, methodically. “At least, when she was young.” Her reaction to Mercedes had never matched her reaction to other children who had come their way. And there had been plenty of them. So many babies.

Her hatred had been instinctual. Something buried with her. She had never allowed herself to think of it more deeply than that. Probably for the exact reason Bran had posited.

He touched his nose to her hair. She felt his curiosity through the mating bond. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. I really do not,” she said firmly. “Let’s do that another time. Please.”

The curiosity was replaced with… relief, she thought. And perhaps some discomfort, as if he felt he should be forcing the issue.

She tried to switch tactics. “Is there anything _you’d_ like to talk about?”

Bran was prevented from responding – and it had felt like he intended to – by the sound of the doorbell downstairs. No one in the pack used the doorbell to their house, certainly not during the day. They both half sat up, listening, as Asil answered the door.

Bran recognized the voice first. “His timing has always been very poor,” he said, grimly.

 _Sherwood_ , she thought.

**then**

Leah woke hungry.

That is all she really remembers of that time After. A haze of hunger. She had been hungry before. Months of hunger. But this was a different kind. A roaring, noisome beast.

Someone – someone important to her – shoved meat in her face, bloody, uncooked, which she ate without thinking about it. She ate with her fingers and it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted, rich with life, with flavor. She ate and ate and ate and then she slept.

Then she woke again. Hungry.

Her memories of the days that followed her Change were nothing more than that. At some point, the man – that someone who was so important to her – introduced himself in a gruff voice, ill-used. “I am Bran Cornick. I am your Alpha. And your mate.”

None of these words made any sense to her. She ate some more.

One day, she finally woke and her first thought was not of hunger. It was that she had a sense of something missing. She sat up. It wasn’t quite light yet but she could see perfectly well. A body lay on the other side of a low fire, back to her, sleeping. He was important, she thought.

She was wearing a man’s shirt and it pooled around her as she stood. Her knees didn’t wobble. The forest was loud. A cacophony of noises. Birds. Leaves rustling. A susurration of wind. She sniffed. Something smelled terrible though. She lifted her arm, the sleeve of the shirt ballooned around her. It smelled— oh, Lord, how it smelled. Of sweat and piss and _blood_ and something—something worse—so much worse—

She gagged violently. Then the man was there, pulling the shirt from her body and she fought him, instinctively, horror rising and with it the panic. He easily contained her but she smelled blood, fresh blood this time. She had wounded him.

“Stop,” he ordered, and she felt the order in her bones. She all but sagged against him, panting. “I’ll not lay a hand on you.”

She didn’t know why, but she believed him. He lowered them to the ground and held her for a moment until her heartbeat slowed. Then he released her and scrambled over to where he had been sleeping. A new shirt, significantly less odorous, was tossed towards her. He kept his back to her whilst she changed.

“Leah Fenwood,” she said, half remembering his words of introduction from before. Yesterday. A week ago. Whenever.

She turned, looking into the forest, towards the mountains, where her memories were. Where she could hear the echoes of a song. She started to hum, then paused to ask, “Did you save me?”

**now**

Leah had been nervous, walking down the stairs to greet him. It was not something she was practiced in, greeting a long-lost lover, for she had not known she’d had one.

She was surprised when that nervousness was replaced with something significantly lighter at the sight of him. She smiled in relief, the relief making her say the first thing that came to her mind. “I cannot believe no one would see the resemblance.”

Asil had shown Sherwood to Bran’s office. There was even a tea set out, in the good china. Asil only ever used the good china. 

As they entered, Sherwood stood, a sheepish look on his face and a grimoire in his hand. His smile was Bran’s. His eyes were Samuel’s. The Cornick genes really were very strong.

“That was locked up,” Bran muttered, snatching the book from his brother’s hand, his nose wrinkling.

“I believe my nephews worked it out. And it was singing to me, Bran, who am I to ignore its call? May I greet your mate?” Sherwood asked of him, smoothly changing the subject.

Bran waved a hand, an imperious ‘yes’, and went to push aside the picture above the mantle, hiding the warded safe that even she could not access. Leah thought he was deliberately keeping his back to them.

She instinctively held her hand out to Sherwood, just as she had done the last time they had met. Other dominant werewolves did not greet another’s mate with anything less than formality. At least, the old ones didn’t. Things might be different elsewhere. 

Sherwood held her fingers lightly and bowed over her hand like a gentleman. His lips did not touch her skin but she felt his breath. It tickled. No more. Her own breath did not catch, as it still did when her husband touched her. There was no rush of warm feeling.

The sense of relief intensified.

Bran, his back still to them, prodded at his lackluster fire until the flames licked over the fresh log. He strolled to his desk and tossed himself into his chair. “So, I presume you have your memories back.”

Leah’s lips quirked at the testiness of Bran’s tone, as if there was still a part of him that thought it had all still been Sherwood’s doing. _Brothers_ , she thought. She remembered what it was like to have brothers.

Dismissing this lonesome thought, she poured the tea, recalling how Sherwood took his, the same as Bran did. They both had a sweet tooth.

He thanked her for his tea and answered Bran’s question. “Abruptly. Did you… kill it?” His green eyes slanted to Leah as she took a seat in the armchair by the fire and then returned to Bran.

Bran toyed with the paperwork on his desk. “Not I.”

“A pack effort,” Leah said quietly, sipping her drink. She hoped Sherwood did not want to know details. She did not think she was up for that retelling yet. Maybe in another two hundred years.

Sherwood was a Cornick and he let silence do his talking for him. He sat on the wooden chair that Bran kept against the wall, the one she privately referred to as the naughty chair, for it was only ever used for misbehaving pack members to take an uncomfortable seat whilst he yelled.

Perhaps they were all Cornicks, she thought then, as the silence settled around all three of them. She had never really thought of that before. She had not been Leah Fenwood for a very long time. As well as carrying his name, everything she was had been molded by her experiences with Bran. 

She really had never thought of that before, always felt like an outsider looking in.

Leah sipped her tea and slipped looks at Sherwood out of the corner of her eye, as her husband resolutely continued to not engage with either of them. The mating bond had shrunk a little between them, noticeable to her only because of its very newness. She had studied its shape intently for days. She didn’t believe he had done it intentionally. Her husband was not quite in control at the moment, swinging as he was from emotional highs and lows. She poked at the bond and saw Bran twitch.

More than a trickle came through, a stream of Bran’s varying shades of unhappiness. Someone with more experience would know what to do. Anna, a handful of years a werewolf, would no doubt be well practiced in reading and comforting her unhappy spouse.

Leah had not a clue. Her reactions to Bran’s unhappiness had always been practical solutions as he would not accept anything else from her. She didn’t know what he wanted now.

She put her cup down and rubbed her hands over her thighs. She addressed Sherwood. Dai. Whoever he was and whoever he had been. “Thank you. For helping me escape. I don’t believe I ever thanked you for that, before.” Not being in any fit state to do so.

“Some escape,” Bran’s brother murmured regretfully. There was a flash of gold across his eyes. “I was in no condition to save anyone, in the end.”

Bran had said much the same about himself. One of their many not-so-measured conversations. She had never known he was planning to kill himself before his brother summoned him to aid them, lest he give into his wolf and murder his son. She, like everyone, had believed Bran when he claimed he had been searching for a suitable mate. And if sometimes she had wondered why a memory-less, half-mad creature had seemed ‘suitable’ to him, she had not allowed herself to think on it much longer. Both of them ignored their beginning.

But she did not say any of that. “I’m here, aren’t I? Thanks to you. And you,” she added, raising her eyebrows at her mate.

Bran rested his hand on the desk, smoothing his fingers over the leather pad, watching this movement intently. His face was carefully blank.

Leah rolled her eyes. No, she was no good at this. “Shall I go, then? You both presumably have a great deal to discuss.” Hopefully not her. “Try not to argue,” she added, remembering the last time, the cold magic that had leaked from this room.

“You don’t need to go,” Sherwood said, standing as she did. His eyes were very green, very kind. She remembered them well.

It really was shocking – it always was – how he hadn’t changed. Though she had seen him only a handful of years before, the return of her older memories were almost fresher. He should have been in homespun clothes, not jeans and a hooded sweater. His hair should have been longer, though it was by no means tidy now.

“No. I think I do.” She lifted a hand, almost unaware that she was doing it, and touched his face. Physical displays of affection were usually difficult for her. “Thank you,” she said, again. “I truly am grateful for what you did.”

Sherwood held her hand against his face for just a moment, his eyes half-fluttering closed, then released her. “I am glad to see you looking so well.”

Leah cast a glance at her spiky husband, now playing intently with a pen. “You can relax. I’m going.”

He said nothing but through the bond she felt his apology.

**then**

She experienced her first full moon on the journey. She did not whimper in pain through the change, barely uttered a single sound, because she did not think he would like that. She did not think he would care.

When she lay, panting, in the new form, he gave her a brisk nod – as close to approval as she ever received – and then he changed himself.

She watched, her muzzle resting on her front paws. It was horrifying but also strangely beautiful, how the man became wolf, his body misshaping into grotesque, unnatural contours, his bones cracking, fluid gushing, the fur spreading like grass growing in the space of a handful of minutes.

When he was done, her Alpha stood and shook himself, kicking out his back legs. She had seen glimpses of wolves before – _before_ now, _before_ this – and he was unexceptional. She wondered if she looked like that.

Without a glance at her, he trotted off, away from the camp, their new horses. She gathered she was expected to follow so she did so, her new limbs obedient, paws lifting from the ground as if she had always known how to move in this form with four legs instead of two.

Her Alpha was a hard task master that night, as he was in all things. He nipped her, growled her, barked when she did not behave as she ought. When she was not quiet enough, not stealthy enough. _Be still or you will go hungry_ , he threatened her.

She did not want to feel hunger again. She froze to the ground, obeyed him.

The scents in the night, even more powerful now than they had been in her human form, were overwhelming. She wanted to smell everything – all the good and all the bad – in equal measure and he encouraged this, identifying what she found. _Boar_ , he told her, of one particularly dense scent. She could feel he was pleased and she prickled with her own pleasure. _I suppose it’s soon for you to tackle that_. _Wait here._

He left her then, disappearing like a shadow into the darkness, and she was abruptly alone with all the noises of the night. She didn’t think she had been alone for a long time and she was afraid. All the feelings – the aching grief of a sadness she did not, could not remember, fear, anger – came rushing back. She whimpered, backing herself against a tree trunk as if she could escape them and felt for the first time a new presence, rising up from inside.

Was this the wolf spirit, as her Alpha called it? The spirit of the wolf, a manifestation of the partnership between her human half and the form she currently embodied. When he had explained it, the first time, his words leaving his mouth but making no sense to her, she had struggled to comprehend, as she struggled to comprehend many things about this new life.

 _Spirit?_ she asked it, tremulously. _Is that you?_

Warmth spread. _She_ , and it was a she, was young yet – learning just as Leah was. She didn’t communicate, not in words, but in ephemeral, base desires.

She desired Leah to be safe. Be well. Be calm, cool, collected. She would help.

Leah felt the spirit rise up stronger, push back at those overwhelming feelings that Leah’s weak human self could not contain. All the thoughts, the memories. Pushed them back and back until they were nothing more than a dull discord.

It was astonishing. Leah was grateful. The respite was acute.

But the respite revealed a corner of her mind, where she could still hear the first notes of a song, achingly familiar and beautiful, even though she didn’t seem to know the words.

At least in this body, she could not sing it. For the wolf did not want her to.

**now**

Bran could not have Sherwood in the house. “I’m not comfortable,” he knocked a hand at his chest, a gesture Sherwood would recognize as meaning the beast inside, “with you being so close to her.”

Sherwood inclined his head, understanding. “She told you, then.”

He nodded. Dominant werewolves were possessive. It was a fact. Leah was his but she had once been his brother’s. His brother, who had touched Leah with love and lust, he was sure of it. Who had wanted to Change her so they could be together for eternity.

Bran could be as factual as he liked about it but that didn’t stop how he felt. Part of him would like to hurt Sherwood, remove his historical competition for Leah’s affections. Punish him for loving Bran’s mate. It was an unbearable feeling filled with bile, with something close to hate, even though – rationally – he knew Leah did not feel that way any longer. Knew because she had let him know through the mating bond, clear as day. She had been relieved she did not feel that way.

And a small part, a very small part of him, mourned for his brother. For what Bran had done. What Bran had _taken away_ from him. He knew what it felt like to have love wrenched away.

“It was a very long time ago. In any case, I have a room at the motel,” Sherwood said, smiling wryly. “As I suspected as much.” He stood, favoring his good leg. “I’ll leave you now. Visit a few friends. You’ll let me know when Wellesley returns?”

Bran intended to. What Sherwood had told him of his time in the witches’ hands was something they needed to discuss as a group. He also wanted Sherwood’s view on the Hardesty’s torture rest home. “Tomorrow. You— come for dinner. This evening.” He loved his brother. Again, rationally, Bran knew time would fix everything else. He would get used to it.

“I would like that.”

Bran walked Sherwood out, watched his brother disappear down the drive.

Then he strode purposefully downstairs to the maze of rooms that were not for public viewing. He passed the secure rooms where sometimes his wildlings spent their restless nights, the security room with its screens and humming black boxes where every house, every road and track could be seen from every angle. Beyond these were more functional rooms, organized by his wife’s hands.

He found Leah in the cool, dimly lit store room – a room filled with all their emergency food supplies, packed on wall to wall shelves. Canned goods, water, sacks of flour, rice, preserves, pickles. There was even a stockpile of freeze-dried items.

Some of this was bought. Some of this Leah made herself, seasonally. As she had always done.

A dozen hamper baskets were laid out on the center table and she was filling them. Once a month, she dropped goods off to their wildlings to supplement what they hunted. It was one of her duties.

Many of their wildlings frightened her down to her bones.

“I love you,” Bran said, though that had not been what he was intending to say. “Very much.”

Leah paused, then continued placing cans into a basket. There was a small frown line in the middle of her forehead. Through the bond, he could feel her confusion but also her pleasure. “As I love you.”

Bran wanted to say more. _Saying_ was important. _Talking_ was important. He was not good with either, with her. Practice, he thought wryly. Time.

“May I help?” he said instead.

She smiled at him. It was sweet, an alien expression on his indomitable wife’s face. “You may. There’s— notebooks, pencils, next door. Toilet paper. The biodegradable kind. Batteries. And there’s a stack of clothes on the end table. Bring those.”

He did so, returning from the other room. She directed him to fill the baskets sternly, as she would have any other member of their pack. The clothes were new but they had been recently washed to remove the scent of humans, of the stores they had no doubt come from. Leah had handled them enough that they had picked up her scent. He folded and tucked items into hampers. The last time he had done this with her, it had been significantly less elaborate. She had made improvements. 

“Are you taking these today?” he asked, intending to go with her.

Leah shook her head. “No. I need to go to the grocery store, pick up some fresh fruit. Tomorrow. I’ll do that tomorrow.” She ended the sentence sounding tired.

“Today has been enough.” Bran regretted, briefly, inviting his brother to dinner without conferring with her first. He should have done that. “Sherwood is coming tonight. I’ll cook,” he added, quickly. “If that is okay with you.”

“It’s okay with me, if it’s okay with you.”

He snorted. “Getting there.” It was only a half lie. They both smiled to acknowledge it.

“Getting there,” she repeated, the sweet smile blooming again.

He felt it then. The first glimmer of hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I took some liberties with Sherwood in this. A whim, more than any concrete hints from the books.


End file.
